D&D 5E (2024) Assassination on a PC yay or nay?

[Zardnaar]

So at lvl 4 the PCs foiled the plans of a Shade. They watched her via a communication device dispatch an assassin and dark justicier to deal with them.

Level 5 and a tenday later they were traveling with Cornyr fairly safe right?

Near Arabel tge assassin struck. +10 on initiative, nightfall stealth role beat passive perception. Advantage on initiative, 28 assassin won.

CR8 vs 5th lvl PCs. RAW around a medium encounter. Last campaign involved lots of bhaalists. They usually used hold spells/command.

First strike. Critical hit. Base damage 1d8+4+6d6 poison. 3 attack. Next strike 20+ dropped the PC to 0. 3rd attack I targeted the downed PC putting them close to death.

Assassin then used shadow step (refluffed shadair kai as Shadovar ) and ran. End of encounter.

So that was it. Fiendish to a crit, raising tension and an assassin being intelligent and well an assassin I did a reasonable attempt of killing the PC's.

Some of the 5.5 reworks the monsters hit like trucks relative to 5.0. Goblin hexers, various cultists, assasssins, mages, archemages, performers all hurt. Hell Lost Library adventure has a mage apprentice that hurt lvl 1/2.

So several things going on.

1. DM special. Added a race to an NPC.
2. It did its thing scoring a crit.
3. Focus fire on one PC dropping them start of round 1.
4. Struck the PC once downed.
5. Shoot and scoot. Assassins mobility it got outta dodge.

PC chosen was random. Each player rolled a dice lowest got targeted (I do this when I suspect something will suck. Wife's at table she rolls the lowest she gets hit. No DM favorites).

Player was kinda shocked. Also the youngest player who has a very nasty striker type. They live action economy command or hold person has a 75% chance of success if combat continued.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Totally ok.

No one died, but it was tense.

Giving enemies species encounters is fair game to me and should have been the advice in the MM or DMG to begin with.

 

[Tigris]

So a CR 8 has CP budget of 3900 for a party of 5 with medium xp on that level being 750 this is medium encounter sure, but surprise does also increase difficulty.


I mean no one died, but this was also 0% fun because there was 0% decision.

Its just the GM having fun by making up a horror story where players cant interact with.


Ideally as a GM you dont want to use moch more than then other players in average. It cant be helped often, but in this combat you as GM had 100% of the playtime which is as far away from the optimum as possible.

 

[Brendan Byrd]

*Attempted.

They were warned, and the target was random. I think you did that right.

The characters are going to be jumping at shadows now.
Was that the intended goal?
Is this going to be a recurring NPC?

I suspect this may be a pivot point in the game/campaign.

 

[Artamo]

As a one time thing for a campaign, fine. Wouldn’t repeat that same exact scenario though.

 

[Thommy H-H]

Balance issues aside (a single PC downed in one turn by an ambush is fine), what did you want out of the encounter, and what did you want them to get out of it?

Because, at the moment, the situation is that the assassin surprises everyone, takes down whoever's closest (let's say), keeps stabbing them after they fall, then runs away. That's fine, but it doesn't feel like the party had a lot of agency, and it reads as a targeted attack on that particular character. If it was meant to be a random strike, the assassin probably shouldn't have focused on a single victim, which would also have given the rest of the party something to do (if only rolling dice!). I also wouldn't have had them run that soon. This smart assassin would know that the downed PC would be healed by their friends, after all: the best chance of dealing a blow to the party as a whole is taking as many of them out as possible.

It's sort of a weird scenario, because it's basically a small setback that you could handle as a cut scene: "Make a group Perception check. On a failure, an assassin jumps out and stabs one of you before teleporting away! The victim doesn't get any benefit from this Long Rest and you have to use 1d4 of your healing potions." (In 4ed you'd maybe run it as a skill challenge that saps healing surges). But by running it as a full combat encounter, it feels like there should be more opportunity for the party to do something about it. Yeah, the dice were against them and that happens, but at the point where the assassin critted the target, I'd be adapting my plans slightly. Like maybe the target isn't that random, and the assassin has a reason to focus on them at the exclusion of all else. That way, when the rest of the party Bloodies them and forces them to teleport, they feel like they saved their friend and have a mystery to solve. Or maybe they learned something about how shadovar assassins fight: once they have a chance to kill, they always take it! That might be useful to know!

Idk. It's not like it went horribly wrong, but if the dice lead to a less fun situation, you need to do something to salvage it in the moment, I would say.

 

[mamba]

As a one time thing for a campaign, fine. Wouldn’t repeat that same exact scenario though.

Esp since the whole party survived, the next attempt will be hitting harder…

 

[mamba]

If it was meant to be a random strike, the assassin probably shouldn't have focused on a single victim, which would also have given the rest of the party something to do (if only rolling dice!). I also wouldn't have had them run that soon. This smart assassin would know that the downed PC would be healed by their friends, after all: the best chance of dealing a blow to the party as a whole is taking as many of them out as possible.

even with focused fire they did not take anyone out, so targeting more PCs would be an even worse strategy.

The smart assassin knows that they are outnumbered and have to get away before the party has a chance to take them out. All your idea accomplishes is that the only dead person for sure is the assassin

 

[Thommy H-H]

even with focused fire they did not take anyone out, so targeting more PCs would be an even worse strategy.

The smart assassin knows that they are outnumbered and have to get away before the party has a chance to take them out. All your idea accomplishes is that the only dead person for sure is the assassin

Okay, I was assuming the assassin didn't know the downed PC was still alive, I guess. So it takes one down, moves onto the next. As I say, if the plan is just "do a lot of damage to one PC then run", it barely even needs to be a combat encounter. My broader point is that, yes, the assassin acted logically in the situation, but it led to a wasted opportunity to do something interesting because it had the DM's omniscience. You can roleplay a monster as intelligent without it having perfect knowledge. In this case, my question is, why did the assassin attack at all? Did it expect to have to fight its way out? Why not just sneak in, poison their supplies or something and teleport away?

The exact scenario isn't important, really. You should just know what an encounter is for in your game. If it's going to be a fight, come up with excuses to make it a real one, otherwise the outcome is unsatisfying.

 

[Artamo]

Esp since the whole party survived, the next attempt will be hitting harder…